On August 13, 2026, the Interior Department finalized the largest expansion of hunting and fishing in Fish & Wildlife Service history — opening more than 92 million acres, roughly 95% of the entire National Wildlife Refuge System, with 1,488 new hunting and sport-fishing openings across 32 states and 111 field stations, including 14 refuges opened to hunting for the first time. The refuge system was built primarily to protect wildlife; the rule was finalized just weeks after the administration deleted the Endangered Species Act's definition of "harm," and forms part of a broader effort to deregulate federal lands and lift conservation limits set by prior administrations. Interior framed the move as aligning federal rules with state management and the outdoor-recreation economy.

The BLM moved to cancel grazing permits for American Prairie's 952-bison conservation herd across 63,500 acres in Montana — ruling that bison managed for ecological restoration don't qualify as "domestic livestock." The decision inverts the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, written to halt cattle overgrazing in the first place.

The USDA Beltsville Agricultural Research Center — the go-to crisis lab for US beekeepers — is being shuttered just months after the worst bee die-off in American history. In winter 2025, beekeepers lost 60–80% of their colonies nationwide (~1.7 million). Beltsville scientists were actively working the crisis when the Trump administration first fired staff, then announced the full closure.

Trump's "God Squad" — a cabinet panel convened for only the 4th time in American history — unanimously waived the Endangered Species Act for all Gulf of Mexico oil and gas drilling. The administration's own biologists stated the drilling program "is likely to jeopardize the continued existence" of the Rice's whale. Legal scholars called it potentially the first time any government has knowingly moved to extirpate a species from the Earth.

Biden's Fish & Wildlife Service had formally proposed listing monarchs as threatened, with a December 2025 deadline. Trump officials quietly reclassified it as a "long-term action" with no rescheduled date. In 2025, not a single animal was newly listed under the ESA — the first time that had happened since 1981.

ESA protections were stripped from this Great Plains bird after the Permian Basin Petroleum Association and National Cattlemen's Beef Association sued to remove them. The Trump administration sided with the plaintiffs, ending protections for a species that once numbered in the millions and has collapsed 90% due to energy and agriculture development.

Biden's 2023 ban on M-44 "cyanide bomb" devices on BLM land was reversed via a quiet April 2026 memo. These spring-loaded traps eject lethal sodium cyanide into the face of any animal, child, or dog that pulls on the scented bait — indiscriminate killers described by wildlife groups as having no safe use on public land.

The Trump administration finalized a rule in July 2026 narrowing the word "harm" in the Endangered Species Act to exclude habitat destruction. For 50 years, federal law considered destroying a species' forest, wetland, or nesting ground as "harm." The new rule allows logging, oil drilling, mining, and development on critical wildlife habitat as long as animals aren't directly killed. Habitat destruction is the #1 driver of extinction globally.

In November 2025, the Trump administration eliminated the "blanket rule" that automatically extended ESA protections to threatened species. Previously, a species listed as "threatened" received the same shield as "endangered" ones. Now, agencies must craft lengthy species-specific rules — a potentially years-long process that leaves newly listed species in limbo and provides a window for habitat destruction to proceed.

After Trump took office, the BLM more than doubled its sale of wild horses to over 3,700 animals, exploiting a legal loophole that technically bans slaughtering wild horses directly by selling them cheaply to third-party buyers who export and slaughter them abroad. Horses that cost the government $3,000 to capture are sold for as little as $25, while buyers collect up to $750 per horse at slaughter plants. Trump had explicitly called for Congress to authorize killing wild horses in Project 2025. "The BLM is saying to the public that slaughter is off the table, but they're doing it in plain sight," said the director of a wild horse sanctuary.

On August 4, 2026, the Interior Department moved to delete two Obama-era Arctic drilling safeguards from 2016: the requirement to keep a relief rig on hand to kill a well blowout, and the mandate for a documented plan to respond to spills and extreme weather. It is the second attempt at this rollback — the first, in 2020, was undone before it took effect. The move rides alongside the administration's 11th National Offshore Leasing Program, which proposes as many as 34 lease sales across roughly 1.27 billion acres of Alaskan, Gulf and Pacific waters through 2031. "There's no such thing as safe drilling in the Arctic Ocean," warned the Center for Biological Diversity, noting that shifting sea ice and remoteness make spill response "virtually impossible."

Land bordering the Grand Canyon, Zion, Joshua Tree, Arches, Grand Teton, and Denali was opened for oil and gas leasing. Congress simultaneously mandated quarterly lease sales regardless of environmental review. The NPCA noted that 81% of BLM land is already open for leasing — targeting these park border areas is a political choice, not an energy necessity. Bipartisan polling shows strong public opposition.

In October 2025, Interior Secretary Burgum finalized plans to open the entire 1.5-million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling — land considered sacred by the Indigenous Gwich'in people, who depend on the Porcupine caribou herd that calves there. The administration also reversed Biden-era drilling restrictions across the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, providing industrial access to habitat for caribou, grizzly bears, and thousands of migratory birds.

Beginning in June 2025, the Trump administration moved to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule — opening 40 million acres of national forests in 36 states and Puerto Rico to logging, oil drilling, and mining. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska — the world's largest intact temperate rainforest, storing irreplaceable old-growth carbon — is especially threatened. An estimated 48 million Americans source their drinking water from these now-unprotected watersheds. The formal repeal entered public comment in August 2026, running through September 21, 2026. An August 2026 study by the Center for Biological Diversity found the repeal would push more than 400 imperiled species onto what researchers called an “extinction fast track.”

On July 13, 2026, Trump signed proclamations slashing Bears Ears National Monument from 1.4 million acres to just 121,100 acres (a 91% cut) and Grand Staircase-Escalante from 1.87 million acres to 181,541 acres (a 90% cut). The administration declared the land contains "resources vital to energy and resource independence" — including uranium, silver, copper and zinc. Earthjustice called it illegal under the Antiquities Act, as the law allows designating monuments but not reducing them.

The Forest Service approved glyphosate — classified by the WHO as a probable human carcinogen — for fire restoration work in and around the Lake Tahoe Basin, threatening one of the world's clearest and most iconic lakes. The approval came as an investigation revealed glyphosate use in California forests has surged nearly 5× since 2008, relying on a safety study later found to have been ghost-written by Monsanto employees.

The Trump administration rescinded all 3.5 million acres previously designated as offshore wind energy areas across federal waters — ending planned lease sales off Texas, Louisiana, Maine, New York, California and Oregon. The administration also paid French company TotalEnergies $982 million in taxpayer money to cancel its offshore wind projects in New York and North Carolina, with a contractual requirement that the funds be reinvested in fossil fuel projects.

In July 2026, the EPA's Office of Water shelved a Biden-era risk assessment and declined to set limits on PFAS "forever chemicals" in biosolids — treated sewage sludge spread on farmland as fertilizer. The agency's own testing had found PFAS in agricultural sludge at levels up to 9.4 parts per billion, while the research it set aside indicated cancer risk climbs above just 1 part per billion. The EPA characterized the practice as affecting "less than 1% of America's farmland," even as it acknowledged that roughly 20% of managed sludge is sold to the public or applied where people may be exposed. Legal and conservation groups are challenging the move in court.

Biden-era rules designed to slash ethylene oxide emissions from commercial sterilization plants by 92% were reversed. Trump exempted 41 facilities in July 2025, then proposed rolling back the emissions standards entirely in March 2026. The EPA itself found in 2016 that ethylene oxide is 60× more carcinogenic than previously known. Communities near these plants — often schools and churches — had been breathing it for decades without warning.

In October 2025, the Trump EPA approved continued widespread use of atrazine — banned in 60+ countries, classified by the WHO that same month as "probably carcinogenic to humans," and found by the EPA's own scientists to threaten 1,000+ endangered species. The new rules weakened prior safeguards, allowing 50% more atrazine into waterways. The EPA had flagged harmful contamination in 11,249 US watersheds; the new plan would clean up fewer than 1%.

4 of 6 Biden-era PFAS "forever chemical" drinking water limits were rescinded outright; the other 2 were pushed to 2031. An estimated 200 million Americans have PFAS in their tap water. Concurrently, new EPA guidance created "flexibilities" critics say allow landlords and utilities to justify not replacing lead service lines — a neurotoxin with no safe exposure level that still reaches over 9 million US homes.

In November 2025, the Trump EPA proposed a new Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule that would remove Clean Water Act protections from up to 91% of the nation's wetlands and all ephemeral streams. Wetlands absorb up to 1.5 million gallons of floodwater per acre, filter drinking water, and provide habitat for half of all threatened and endangered species in the US. Only half of US states have independent wetland protections, leaving many communities with no fallback.

In June 2026, the EPA approved diflufenican and epyrifenacil — two PFAS "forever chemical" herbicides never before used in the US — for use on corn and soybeans, the nation's two most-grown crops. They joined cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram, making four PFAS pesticide approvals under Trump 2.0 in less than 18 months (vs. one under Biden in four years). Approvals landed just days after the Supreme Court curtailed Americans' ability to sue pesticide makers for cancer. The EPA deputy overseeing pesticide approvals was a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association.

In July 2026, the EPA proposed unwinding the 2023 Clean Trucks standards — removing the automatic engine "derate" that forces a truck to throttle down when its emissions controls fail (replaced with a dashboard warning light) and weakening the warranty and useful-life rules that keep those controls working. By the EPA's own analysis, the change raises smog-forming NOx from heavy trucks 4.2% by 2030 and 11.6% by 2055 — yet the agency declined to model the effect on air quality or human health. Heavy trucks are roughly 5% of vehicles but the single largest source of the pollutants that trigger asthma attacks, bronchitis, heart attacks and strokes.

On February 12, 2026, Trump stood at the White House and announced the elimination of the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding — the scientific and legal foundation for every federal greenhouse gas regulation for 17 years. It classified CO₂, methane, and four other greenhouse gases as threats to public health. Without it, the EPA loses authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions from cars, power plants, and oil and gas facilities. The National Academies of Sciences had reaffirmed the finding was "accurate and reinforced by stronger evidence" just months before. Trump called it "the single largest deregulatory action in American history."

In February 2026, the Trump EPA weakened Biden-era Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for coal-fired power plants, reverting to weaker 2012-era limits. The Biden rules would have cut mercury emissions by 23% and required continuous monitoring equipment. Trump had already exempted 71 coal plants from compliance in 2025. Mercury exposure causes severe neurological damage, especially in children and fetuses. The rollback also eliminated emissions standards for filterable particulate matter.

In November 2025, the Trump EPA took the unprecedented step of asking a federal court to strike down Biden's 2024 soot (PM2.5) air quality standard — a rule the EPA's own modeling showed would prevent 4,500 premature deaths, 800,000 asthma attacks, and 290,000 lost workdays per year by 2032. Soot particles penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, raising risk of heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, and cancer. Black communities bear roughly 1.5× the exposure burden of white communities.

The NSF began removing 900+ deep-sea instruments placed a decade ago to monitor AMOC ocean currents, marine heat waves, coastal flooding risk, and greenhouse gas absorption — eliminating irreplaceable long-term climate data at the most critical monitoring period in history. Project 2025 had explicitly targeted the network as "the source of NOAA's climate alarmism." Congress restored funding twice; the administration proceeded with decommissioning anyway. As the US pulled back, the EU announced a €92M replacement initiative called OceanEye.

The Trump administration proposed the world's first commercial deep-sea mining lease sale — auctioning 33 million acres of seafloor around American Samoa in waters ranging 4,600 to 20,000 feet deep. American Samoa had already enacted a local moratorium on seabed mining. Pacific Indigenous communities were not consulted before the announcement — outreach was scheduled to follow the sale. The lease area sits just 57 miles from the Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Scientists warn the area's deep ecosystems remain "poorly characterized."